The Star Talks To: William G. Thompson

Old Houses, Old(er) People

William G. Thompson looked comfortable sitting beside the hearth in his 150-year-old Bridgehampton house. He has lived there for more than 30 years, and his enthusiasm for the East End and its history has never flagged.

A real estate man, Mr. Thompson has made some local history of his own, changing the landscape and breaking new ground for people who, like himself, worry about how they will manage in their later years.

Photo by Morgan McGivern

Disparaged in the early 1990s by some in Southampton who opposed his proposal for a long-term "life-care community" in Water Mill, he is well on the way to making the idea a reality on the North Fork.

Peconic Landing

It was Mr. Thompson who spearheaded the development of Peconic Landing, a 250-unit long-term-care facility on a 145-acre waterfront site in Southold. The $110 million proposal, which is making its way through the Planning Board process, to date has elicited more than 250 inquiries, Mr. Thompson said, half of them from East End residents.

A graduate of Columbia University, Mr. Thompson started out selling advertising time for NBC television in 1953, when there was "no daytime programming, and stations went off the air at 11:30 p.m. with a sermonette."

He bought his former farmhouse, called Old Fields, as a weekend place in 1966, but soon decided he "enjoyed it here more than there," and, without a job, gave up city life. He has "never looked back," he said.

Old Houses New; New, Old

He has restored his farmhouse with warmth and authenticity, filling it with antiques and portraits of his ancestors. One great-great grandfather, Hugh Smith Thompson, was Governor of South Carolina in the late 1800s; another relative, William Glasgow Thompson, was assistant secretary of the Treasury Department under President Grover Cleveland.

Semi-retired now, Mr. Thompson started out in business here by buying a circa-1730 house for $12,000, moving it, renovating it with the help of the carpentering skills of Harold King and Ray Yastrzemski, and selling it for a respectable profit.

"We made old houses like new, and new houses like old," he said. He has since developed, among other sites, Southampton Town's first clustered subdivision, Bull Head, off Ocean Road in Bridgehampton.

A Better Way

Mr. Thompson's father died in 1968, and a few years later his mother, still living in Westchester, was "getting vague." He moved her to the Todd Nursing Home in Southampton (now the Southampton Nursing Home), but thought, he said, that "there has to be a better way."

Some of his Bull Head clients, he said, thought the same, asking him periodically, "What are you going to do for me later?"

Following a series of nursing home scandals in the 1970s, "continuing care" communities, where residents move from independent to assisted living and ultimately to skilled nursing care, were prohibited in New York State. Since 1989, however, under strict new state legislation, they have again been allowed.

Head Of The List

Peconic Landing, complete with recreational facilities, meals, and cleaning services, will "give people dignity and an interesting way of life," said Mr. Thompson. His own name, he said, heads the list of prospective buyers.

If the development is approved, it will be Long Island's first with cottages and apartments for independent living ($189,000 to $450,000), assisted-living units, and a skilled nursing facility for a total of 60 people.

Owners, 62 and older, will pay monthly fees averaging $2,500 a couple, less for a single, entitling them to whatever care they need, whenever they need it.

No Place To Sit

About 1,000 such facilities have sprung up around the country, Mr. Thompson said. He called it a means of "self-insurance" against the $80,000 average annual cost of private nursing home care.

He estimated the normal length of residence at 14 years, with an average entry age of 74.

Mr. Thompson hopes for approval by April, groundbreaking by September, and occupancy by 2000.

"This will not be a place to sit in a barracuda lounge chair and never get out," said the developer, now 70. There is an existing golf course next door, buses to nearby shopping and New York City, 30 meals a week in the common dining room, a planned pool and tennis courts, and "a great view of the interesting shore line."

Historic Centerpiece

Besides all that, and appealing to Mr. Thompson's sense of history, is the 1857 Braeknock Hall, the property's historic centerpiece, slated for renovation as a community and cultural center. An Italianate stone mansion, it was built for David Gelston Floyd, a shipowner and grandson of the Revolutionary War general for whom the William Floyd Parkway is named.

Among Peconic Landing's board members are Dr. John J. Ferry Jr., Southampton Hospital's president, Thomas Doolan, chairman of the Peconic Health Corporation (the three East End hospitals), John Halsey, director of the Peconic Land Trust, and Ray Wesnofske, chairman of the Bridgehampton National Bank.

Will enough people move to such a facility?

"I think we will be overwhelmed," said Mr. Thompson.